Forecast

$4.3B in 'pork' cash projected

Good government group seeks reform amid $2B increase

Pork barrel spending in the proposed state executive budget has increased by $2 billion this year, to $4.3 billion, the good-government group Citizens Union said in a report issued Monday.

The money, in 60 different proposed spending accounts that are subject to the discretion of elected officials, is approved in the state budget and then distributed to groups afterward, often with little guidance in the original legislation as to where the money goes, the group said. According to its report, the amount of pork barrel spending in last year's enacted budget ended up being roughly the increase that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now proposing in the executive budget.

Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, said at a Capitol press conference there should be a requirement that lawmakers who are allowed to steer the money disclose conflicts of interest.

"The money is spent away from any kind of public scrutiny," Dadey said.

Cuomo in this year's budget proposed new conflict of interest disclosure requirements for some pots of money administered by the state Dormitory Authority and steered by legislators. But the Cuomo administration did not include its own program through which it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, the State and Municipal Facility Program, SAM.

"It would only apply to the Legislature, not anyone in the executive branch," Dadey said.

The Cuomo administration has said that the disclosure rules for SAM exceed those for some previously created funds distributed by Senate and Assembly members.

Citizens Union is also calling for the lump sums in the budget to be disclosed before its passage, disclosure of detailed criteria for the spending, online disclosure of all grants, requiring a three-day aging period for legislative grants and the disclosure of the identity of the sponsor in Senate and Assembly budget resolutions.

Though the governor has again proposed extensive ethics reforms in this year's budget, Dadey said that Cuomo has not sought to meet on the proposals with leaders of good-government groups, as in the past.

"We have not been called in. There has been no meeting with the governor," Dadey said.

Dadey said he did not know if that is because Citizens Union is suing the Cuomo administration over a law passed last year, which requires far more disclosure of donations by nonprofits that lobby, such as Citizens Union.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement: "Dadey and his patrons issued the same tired report last year and the only difference now is they are hypocrites for preaching transparency while suing to keep their own donors secret."

Azzopardi said that every dollar of spending must meet the statutory and program requirements established within appropriation language and be subject to a rigorous agency review process.

He also argued it was unrealistic for the Cuomo administration to know exactly what a given year will bring, and that a budget with no contingencies was unrealistic and a recipe for gridlock.